


Dissonance of Narrators, On the Subject of Intent

by Skyplayer



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Existential Angst, M/M, Meta, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyplayer/pseuds/Skyplayer
Summary: Post-Epilogue DirkJohn.





	Dissonance of Narrators, On the Subject of Intent

Reviving him is the easy part. Just gotta wave my fucking magic wand and come up with some flimsy excuse. You'll eat it right up:

Our ship streaked across the alien sky. Vapors expelled from the craft and scarred the virgin atmosphere with proof of our existence. Below us, an endless biome of purple grass and vivid green lakes. An unexplored frontier sprinkled with... a whole lot of fucking nothing. Sean Murray would have came in his pants. 

A figure started as a faint glow on the horizon. A shimmering mirage that's very existence was blurry. As our ship dared to come closer, the image sharpened into a shining being. It looked humanoid, but with it's features exageratted just enough to be uncanny. It's skin glowed with a familiar, maternal warmth. It reached out. Blinding light.

When we awoke, the planet was gone. We were adrift in space. Fuel usage suggested we were out for at least two earth-days. Everyone was arranged on the floor of the bridge, flat on our backs in a circle. Myself, Terezi, Rose, and...

John Egbert.

It's good but maybe a bit too left-field. Let's try something more contrived and masturbatory:

I could hear Rose and Terezi through the walls again. Night after night, same old routine. I increased the volume on my headphones. I should have packed more variety into the music I brought. 5TB of Old-Earth music is nothing to scoff at but my old tastes skewed a bit too far into the fringe for such repititious listening. On the 200th repeat of this one in particular I actually humored the thought of how one could create a biomechanical functioning Donkey Kong. Drew up some blueprints and everything. 

That's when the idea hit me: an idea a lot less gruesome than another AI-adjacent project. A downright altruistic idea, I think to myself egotistically. 

When I had Terezi bring John's corpse, it was as a contingency for the prototyping in the upcoming SBURB session. We'll fuse him with a bunny rabbit or something and he will no longer be a threat. But maybe, I thought to myself while absent mindingly hitting the "repeat" button again, maybe if I bring him back now there's a chance of manipulating him to much more useful ends. And to play some boardgames with because god damnit Terezi is beating on the wall again kill me.

With the motivation secured, I only needed the means. I simply used my powers of Heart to transplant his still-thriving soul into another robot body. I simply had Terezi locate a possible timeline where he hasn't died, and swapped their consiousness. I simply wrote a dumb story about an alien to give the narrative a plausible reason. I simply brought him back because he's fucking back now in this fan fiction and you just have to roll with that now. All of the above and also none. Whatever you want it to be. John Egbert is alive in this one folks. 

There we go. 

As I was saying, bringing him back is the easy part. Now I just have to live with him.

wow dirk this is so cool did you really write all that?

I wrote everything John. Your entire existence is because of me. I've been actively in control for the last 20% of your journey, and my influence retroactively infected your story like a tachyon virus. I'm a living infohazard in your biography.

haha wow that's pretty neat dude. can I write stuff too now?

There's nothing stopping you but I'm sure it will suck.

pfft don't be mean dirk :(

John Egbert begins riding on a pony. He is having a lot of fun! 

I knew about your personal record of improv fiction consiting of mainly monkeys and the expected output of said monkeys when given a typewriter, but that was even more awful than I anticipated. 

John Egbert keeps riding his pony and doesn't listen to stupid orange guys and their big words.

We can't exist with a physical form except for those which are fabricated by the ones spectating our existence. They can't do such a thing without careful attention by the author to the basic prerequisites of storytelling: Context, Character, and Intent.

Context: the narrative of even the shortest of drabbles needs to exist in the context of a larger story. The world needs not only established rules, but established existence. WHERE is John riding his pony? Are we to leave the readers to pick something at random? Or will they see him in a blank void? 

John Egbert rides his pony all around this SUPER COOL FARM. It's soooooooo awesome its got cows and horses and a big ferris wheel and a big red barn and no anime fans.

Character: everything that happens after the characters are established needs to be kept in check with how that character was established to be. Even in extreme Death of the Author situations, where the character's personal choices would be counter-intuitive to the author's Intent, the character must still act how they would be expected to. The moment characters lose their free will they become nothing but agents for the author to control, losing all interest of the spectator. 

John Egbert is on the pony because fuck you. 

You're actually in the clear here, the canonical John Egbert rode a pony at least one time and it's perfectly in character for you to be this dumb.

is it in character for you to be this mean :(

Absolutely.

Intent: every author has an ulterior motive. Everything is written for a reason. Completely unoppinionated and reliable narrators do not exist. It's this Intent that drives the characters and gives purpose to their world. The narrative is a tug-of-war between the author's intended end and the character's struggle to continue existing. When the intent is fulfilled, the characters are cast aside forever. Left to rot until an unrelated author picks them up and plays with them like lifeless puppets to fullfil their own Intent in their own fiction. We call that fanfic. That's what we are John.

...

...

okay now that you're done with that rant that sounded just like Rose when she was talking about canon, can we go back to the movie?

I sigh and reluctantly hit the Play button. I over-estimated Egbert's intelligence and quickly gave up on the initial plans. He couldn't remember the movement rules of each chess piece and outright refused to play Twister because it "made him feel weird". Those are the only boardgames I brought by the way, they're really the only two that matter. Twister was incredibly important to getting Jake to--

John says to be quiet because we're getting to the good part dirk.

DIRK: You know we can just talk right?

John nods. 

Dirk slaps his face with his palm. I mean I do. John you're turning this exploration on meta-narrative into a shitty roleplay. 

John eats his popcorn and watches the scene where Poe is writing to Casey that he's going to be free soon.

Where the fuck did you get popcorn? This is what I'm talking about. You just retroactively changed the entire previous scene to include popcorn from the start, giving the reader massive narrative whiplash. You want to play this game? Fine:

John Egbert reaches for that popcorn at the same moment that I do. The moment our hands touch we nervously retract. Slowly, nervously, we reach again. Our shakey palms clasp, an embrace of hands equally clammy from young-adult hormones. John looks up at me, staring intently at the eyes behind my shades. He begins to lean in. Our faces come closer and closer until--

no!!! i don't do those things! none of those things! why would i ever do a single one of those things?

There we go. Your Character matters. You are not a homosexual. You would not engage in homosexual acts. Even when the author built all this Context with the Intent to put us together romantically. To push us any further would be violating our Character. That's not to say the end goal still couldn't be reached with proper Context. It would just be more of a slow burn, to push us in that direction and make the transistion from Canon to Fanon seem natural. Or they could say Fuck It, throw some Porn Without Plot out there. Maybe it helps them cope with their life in some way, it doesn't HAVE to make sense. We're still the puppets. The spectator can imagine us however they wish, however the author wishes. There's just no substance to that. It's remarkably less interesting. 

i cant imagine a single timeline of me that would want to kiss you thats so gross

At this moment the search for "John Egbert/Dirk Strider" brings up exactly 346 works. We're in work 347. We're going to have sex. No matter how much it goes against our Character, its the only reason anyone is reading this. If no one was reading it then we wouldn't even exist. The very act of being pictured in the mind of the reader is enough to seal our fate. 

Cameron Poe is now boarding the plane. He thinks he's on his way to freedom, but the author will present forces against him that test his Character. He'll overcome them in the end, but the journey will now be interesting enough to keep the audience's attention for exactly 123 minutes, preventing them from shutting off the screen and enveloping Poe's world in abrupt darkness before the Intent is fulfilled. The outcome is exactly the same as if he had been allowed to land and return home safely, but the Context has turned it into a "Narrative".

ROSE: This is downright pessimistic.

DIRK: Are you finally taking a break from your affair to join in on this tutoring I'm giving John? 

ROSE: He deserves at least an inkling of belief that his existence matters. This generalization that only fictional characters face hardship is abysmal. Maybe you should have spoken more to Dave? He had quite a bit to say on how our lives as very real people didn't have "arcs" or rely on being "interesting" to exist. We can all be very boring and very sad and very real all at the same time.

DIRK: Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to you.

JOHN: i dont understand any of this anymore but thank you rose. now please shut up the movie is getting good.

DIRK: How many times have you seen Con Air?

JOHN: hundreds of times. hundreds.

DIRK: Why?

The question lingers in the air while John thinks long and hard about all the reasons to love a movie. He knows he's being baited into saying "because its interesting" but he's ready to blurt out a massive rant about Con Air specifically. Of the specific jokes he enjoys and the nostalgic memories of his dad. He hesitates because it's not a love that one can put into words. Even when he knows the characters are being portrayed by long since dead actors, he can't explain how much he feels like he knows them as real people. They're friends he can always rely on to cheer him up. Whatever intent you try to imply the author is perverting them for doesn't matter. He doesn't care. 

John secretely knows I'm right. He loves the Plot of the movie. The twists and turns. He holds his breath every time Poe is faced with a new danger despite knowing full well that everything works out in the end. But his newfound narrative awareness starts to wear him down. Every time he presses rewind is he putting the characters through the hardships over and over again? Does Poe exist beyond the continuous 123 minutes on repeat? He always imagined his own epilogue, his embarassing fanfics about Poe and his family having perfect little lives where nothing went wrong ever again. Were those real too? Did that make him a God? Does that make all authors God? 

John holds his head in his hands. Please get out of my head.

DIRK: I think we're beyond the point of our arguments being interesting enough for anyone to keep reading. I'm stepping the fuck out of this fanfic. You can end this however you want Rose.

Dirk slumps in his chair, staring absent mindingly as the movie continues. John is happy that he's finally quiet and the movie enraptures him. He laughs and cheers at Poe's adventure. Dirk gains nothing from his viewing but regret for bringing back John. The movie plays out exactly the same as it always does. The Participants have no effect on its message, but the message has immensely different effects on each of them. It's not just the context and character and intent of the story that defines the meaning found in fiction, but every aspect of the one experiencing it. The moment an author calls their work complete, they lose all power over it. It's true intent is left to be subjectively analyzed by all who come across it. 

Dirk unzips his pants and begins masturbating furiously.


End file.
